Reliable laboratory protocols manipulating the intensity of biobehavioral arousal for children are uncommon, and those available have minimal converging evidence of their efficacy in manipulating arousal across multiple biological systems. This report presents two studies of the efficacy of the modified Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-M). In Study 1, sixty-three 7–15-year olds, and 19 young adults (18–25 yrs) completed the TSST-M. Comparable reactivity across age groups was observed for salivary cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), pre-ejection period (PEP) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), whereas self-reported stress was higher in adults compared to children. In Study 2, eighty-four 7–8-year olds and eighty-six 12–15-year olds were randomly assigned to a standard or low-stress TSST-M condition. Cortisol and self-reported stress responses were higher in the standard compared to the low-stress condition. In contrast, sAA and PEP were higher in the low-stress condition and RSA responses were comparable between the two TSST-M conditions. In addition, age group differences emerged in Study 2, though never in conjunction with the TSST-M manipulation. To test, refine, and advance theory about the implications of stress for child development, laboratory tasks that manipulate and enable assessment of biobehavioral arousal in children are needed.
Reliable laboratory stressor paradigms are essential tools for studies investigating neurobiological mechanisms linking stress reactivity with health outcomes (Chrousos and Gold, 1992). The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum et al., 1993) has become a gold standard, and variations thereof have evolved to systematically manipulate the degree of arousal (e.g., Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004, Het et al., 2009, Taylor et al., 2010 and Wiemers et al., 2013). Research has not focused to the same extent on developing similar tasks for children. During childhood social forces establish and calibrate the set-points and thresholds of biobehavioral stress responses (Alkon et al., 2006), and individual differences in physiological reactivity have important implications for health and functioning (Miller et al., 2011 and Shonkoff et al., 2009). In this study, we tested the utility of a laboratory stressor to induce arousal across multiple biological systems in children and adults, and evaluated whether arousal could be manipulated while maintaining the procedure's objective features.
A commonly used laboratory stressor for children is the TSST-C (Buske-Kirschbaum et al., 1997), which typically but not always (e.g., Dorn et al., 2003, Gunnar et al., 2009a and Martel et al., 1999) elicits significant cortisol reactivity. Variation in TSST-C reactivity could result from a less salient element of social-evaluative threat, an important determinant of hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity in adults (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004). In the TSST-C children finish an exciting story whereas adults in the TSST deliver a mock job interview, which requires self-reflection and is more centrally related to self-identity. Thus, age differences in studies of stress reactivity could be the result of developmental changes in stress systems or of idiosyncratic and uncontrolled features of the different procedures. This also concerns studies of developmental transitions, including the pubertal transition during which considerations of being evaluated socially gain importance. To address this concern, we previously introduced a laboratory stressor based on
